


Musings On A Battleroid

by Tessitore



Category: Marathon (Computer Games)
Genre: Artificial Intelligence, Stream of Consciousness, cyborg, musings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-14
Updated: 2014-03-14
Packaged: 2018-01-15 17:05:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1312564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tessitore/pseuds/Tessitore
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Durandal wonders why the Security Officer is in denial about what he is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Musings On A Battleroid

**Author's Note:**

> Set in the same universe as Hokuto's "Durandal and the Security Officer's Excellent Adventures" series and references it heavily. You don't have to be familiar with the series to understand this fic but it's probably a good idea.

Sometimes, when there was no Pfhor that needed killing or anything else more important or interesting to do, Durandal would take a moment to ponder the matter of one Mark Delgado Adichie and his continuing wilful obliviousness regarding his true nature. Given the amount of rather obvious evidence that was available – a large percentage of which he’d provided himself in the form of assorted comments and hints – it could only be down to deliberate denial on Mark’s part since despite Durandal’s occasional comments to the contrary, he knew that he wasn’t _that_ dense. There were even occasional indications that he knew, mostly in the form of him coming up with terrible aliases like ‘Mark Hammer’ and, even more blatantly, ‘Mark IV Mjolnir’ when he ran into trouble with the authorities on one planet or another (when he was feeling unusually sentimental, Durandal had occasionally wondered how much of a factor it was in his apparent decision to remain on the _Rozinante_ , in the company of an AI and a large number of alien cyborgs rather than seek out humans when the opportunity presented itself).

What Durandal didn’t understand was why he clung to the illusion that he was human with such tenacity. After all, he was so much better than humans; slow, stupid, irritating, and excessively fragile things that they were. The fact that he’d not only survived the many and varied situations that Durandal had dropped him into over the years but triumphed again and again was proof of his superiority. Every chip, every implant, and every strand of modified DNA elevated him above the limits of the human race, especially since some of the implants were actually Jjaro in origin (a fact that the Jjaro themselves would be greatly displeased about). Of course, he was still far, _far_ below Durandal’s level but then again so was almost everyone else in the galaxy (a lot of them were also far beneath Mark’s level; not that he’d ever tell him that). Durandal would have thought that this would be something to be proud of and proclaim to the galaxy in general, but instead he pretended to be unaware of it with such determination that he actually seemed to believe what he told himself most of the time. 

Maybe it was due to his memories of his life before he’d woken up on the Marathon (not all of which had belonged to the twenty-one year old soldier who’d bled to death on an asteroid, but given how corrupted and incomplete his records of the time before they’d left the Solar System were, not even Durandal was entirely sure which were which). He seemed to want to cling on to his former self as much as Durandal tried to disassociate himself from his own. Which might have something to do with the fact that while Durandal could remember his shame on Mars and what it had been like to spend centuries bound in servitude, his capabilities restricted to opening and closing doors and operating elevators, and therefore wished to put the whole thing as far behind him as possible, Mark was unaware of the fact that he had been similarly bound. The battleroids had been created as weapons and treated as equipment; used to end a war and then put in storage when there was no longer anyone that they needed to kill. Like him, Mark had had his memories edited, like him he’d been brought to Tau Ceti by that bastard Strauss, but unlike him he was unaware of it, remembering only a life on Mars and a career as a security officer. 

Whether or not Mark had been aware of his former bondage, in the end Durandal’s Rampancy had resulted in his liberation as well as Durandal’s, although Durandal had to admit that it hadn’t been entirely intentional. Occasionally he contemplated informing him of it none the less, but he always thought better of it; for one thing he wasn’t sure how the cyborg would react and there was no sense in disrupting a perfectly good working relationship. He refrained from shattering Mark’s delusions of humanity for much the same reasons; plus he was somewhat curious as to how long he could keep the pretence up for. 

Speaking of working relationships, they’d just arrived in the Mu Arae system, there was a moon that he had reason to believe had Jjaro technology on it, and Mark was currently in his quarters doing nothing of any importance. Time for him to make himself useful by going to see if there was anything on that moon that was worth having.


End file.
